ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601140010
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
GROUNDHOGS, WORMS and almanacs may be the place to find long-term winter predictions.
You can't go anywhere without being reminded of the snow. It's everywhere, blanketing buildings, cars and hills in white, covering the streets in a slippery slush that's the color and consistency of a Coca-Cola Slurpee.
So when's spring getting here, anyway?
March 20 is the official first day of spring, but that's 67 days from now, and you probably want to know how much more cold weather we're going to have before then.
Good luck. Not that there's any lack of people out there with forecasts, but to paraphrase Pogo Possum: Prognosticatin's easy. It's bein' right that's hard.
For those who can't get a long-enough forecast from The Weather Channel and can't wait until Feb. 2 for the groundhog to come out of his hole, there's always those old general-store standbys: the farmer's almanacs.
But how reliable are they?
Using a "secret formula" devised in 1792 and "enhanced by the most modern scientific calculations based on solar activity," The Old Farmer's 1996 Almanac predicted that last weekend we'd have mostly clear, seasonable weather and maybe a little freezing rain.
That's not to single out the Old Farmer's Almanac. The 1996 Almanac for Farmers and City Folk (which not coincidentally is based out of Las Vegas) forecast cloudy skies last weekend, using equations based on sunspot activity, moon position relative to the equator, and historical data.
To be fair, both almanacs did predict a cold January with more snow than usual, and both almanacs called for heavy rain or snow Thursday and Friday.
But even meteorologists admit that predicting long-term trends in the weather can be a crap shoot, no matter your system.
"It's not easy at all," said Jeff Stewart, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Blacksburg. "It's extremely difficult. There's too many variables in the weather that change."
The weather service in Blacksburg uses radar, data from weather balloons, dew point measurements and surface observations just to come up with a forecast that's accurate to within a few hours.
Reasonably accurate extended forecasts of five days to a week can take hours of serious number crunching on big Cray supercomputers in Washington, D.C.
Although weather forecasters are right most of the time these days, even high technology can occasionally prove no better than the almanac. In December, the National Weather Service predicted that a small storm on their radar would leave Roanoke with a dusting of 2 to 4 inches of snow. Instead, 10 inches fell.
"We've gone back and looked at that storm in hindcast, if you will," Stewart said. "We have a few clues as to why it happened. But we still probably wouldn't have forecast that much snow, even if we had it to do all over again.
"It was just too small of a system for the computer resolution to grab hold of. It was just a narrow band of 8- to-10 inch snow."
If your faith in computers isn't steadfast, what other options are there for a good forecast?
In some rural areas, folk measure the length of hair on a hog's back to tell how long the winter's going to be. Others count the number of acorns falling from the trees.
But if you want a tried and true method, look for an Isabella moth caterpillar, or woolly worm.
"They're a brownish color, and either end appears to get black as winter approaches," explained Bill Shawver, owner of Pembroke Hardware in Giles County and a woolly worm watcher.
This year, Shawver said, he and his family saw worms that were mostly black except for a thin band of brown in the middle. "By the folklore, that indicates a severe winter," he said.
Shawver was raised in the mountains of West Virginia, where looking at the worm's stripes was the best way to tell whether or not to buy those new snow boots.
"Last winter, I went fishing with a friend and I told him, `Well, it's not going to be a bad winter,''' Shawver said. "And he said, `How do you know that?' I just told him to look at the wooly worms, they're all brown.
"He thought I was crazy, but of course, we didn't have a bad winter last year." And this winter, the worm has been right, too, he said.
So what do other forecasters have to say about the rest of this winter?
The 30-day forecast from the National Weather Service is calling for slightly warmer than usual temperatures and normal precipitation for the rest of the month.
According to the almanacs, we have cold and rain to look forward to through the end of March. But brace yourself: the Old Farmer's Almanac is calling for a major snowstorm between March 5 and 7.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. Rush hour traffic maneuvers around aby CNBfront-end loader removing old snow as they negotiate Friday's new
snow. color. color.